One night during the holiday season, my client was a party at a warehouse in an urban area. Gunfire broke out in the area and my client was afraid, grabbed his friend, and got into his car to leave the scene. The area was extremely crowed as my client moved his car through a sea of people. There was also a lot of noise commotion going on at the time. Apparently the police were trying to stop my client, but he never noticed them because they were on foot and coming up from behind his vehicle. The first time he became aware of the officer’s presence was when they banged on his vehicle window.

The client was arrested for using a vehicle to evade arrest. This was all my client was charged with, but the State further alleged my client’s vehicle, which was used during the commission of the offense, was a deadly weapon. This allegation would enhance the punishment from a State Jail Felony (180 days up to 2 years jail) to a Third Degree Felony (2 years up to 10 years in jail and up to a $10,000 fine). A deadly weapon finding is serious bad news in many different ways.

I went to work on the case, investigating the facts to gain what leverage we could to negotiate with the prosecutor. After several weeks of hard work on the case, the prosecutor agreed to lower the charges from the felony level to the misdemeanor offense level. This dropped the potential punishment range down to 0 days to 1 year in jail and $0 up to a $4,000 fine from which the client received deferred adjudication and probation. Better yet, the client will not have his rights cut in half and have to deal with the stigma of being a convicted felon.

As you can expect, my client was relieved and very pleased with the result-and also a little wiser from an experience that could have turned out to be much worse.

Bo Kalabus

Bo began his legal career as a civil litigator and specialized in defending personal injury cases. After several years in civil practice, Bo turned his focus to starting his own law firm and developing a criminal defense practice to complement his experience on the civil docket. On September 4, 2010 the Kalabus Law Firm was proud to announce its affiliation with Rosenthal & Wadas L.L.P.